by Doug Farren
It wasn’t hard for Tom to find a restaurant that could serve up a perfectly grilled steak. According to the information he found on the planet’s datanet, the meat was from a local source and was absolutely delicious. The baked potato and broccoli were also perfect. He opted for a private table located on the restaurant’s second floor on a balcony overlooking the street. The one-way glass bubble allowed him to watch the flow of people below while he enjoyed his steak. Glish was definitely a one-of-a-kind planet.
While most of the people walking the streets were clothed, there were a number of them who were not. Very few people stopped to stare at them. The vast majority were either Terran or Shandarian. The Omel race was also well represented. Tom wondered how many of them were here for fun and how many were making a living performing body alteration surgery. Other races in much smaller numbers, many of them here just to observe, were also present.
A young Terran couple stopped across the street as he was finishing his meal. The man was dressed in a robe and appeared to be nervous. She was completely naked and appeared to be trying to talk her companion into doing something. She looked around and pointed to a grassy spot not far from the busy sidewalk. Tom pushed his dish aside and watched as the couple lay down on the grass together. She made the first move and before long they were making love.
“Exibitionists,” Tom said aloud, shaking his head. His voice sounded muted inside the small room.
The food, the scenery, and the activity outside were beginning to have an effect on him. “Menu please,” Tom said.
A screen rose up from the center of the table. He had used it earlier to order his food. Now, he had other things in mind. Picking it up, he used it to access the city-wide classifieds. He paused, trying to figure out what sort of pleasure he wanted. Almost anything a person could imagine was available on Glish. As if it was anticipating his confusion, or perhaps because the pad’s interface was so well programmed, a line of text appeared on the screen: “Don’t know where to begin?” it read. “If you allow the pad to access your identicard, the system will search the classifieds and present some suggestions for you.”
One of the things Glish proudly advertised was how well it maintained the privacy of those who visited. This seemed to be counter-intuitive considering the extensive use of video surveillance systems. Unlike most places in the Alliance, Glish had strict rules against scanning a person’s identicard without their explicit permission. Even the publicly available information contained on the card such as a person’s name and species was off-limits. The penalties for unauthorized scanning were very strict.
Tom touched the button that appeared on the screen to authorize the scan. A moment later, a slowly scrolling list of ads appeared. Still undecided, he sat back and read. The variety of offers was staggering. How would he choose? He decided to simply allow the ads to scroll by until something jumped out at him. It took about ten minutes.
“Stop,” he commanded the pad. The short description read as if it was written specifically for him. Touching the entry brought up the full text. The ad had been placed by a middle-aged Omel woman looking to spend a quiet evening with a Terran to ‘explore the range of pleasurable activities the two species could experience together’. Further down, the ad stated, ‘If the right person responds, I would like to test the limits of Terran pleasure’. He wasn’t too sure what that meant, but it sounded interesting. The side-bar indicated she was available and waiting for a live reply. Tom touched the button.
There was a short delay then her face appeared on the pad. She looked surprised when she answered. “I didn’t expect to receive a reply from a peacekeeper,” she said, after Tom introduced himself.
“Will that present a problem?” Tom asked.
“No!” she quickly replied. “In fact, I think it will make things all the more interesting. I’m Ishorri Nef. When would you like to get together?”
“I’m free now.”
“And how many days are you planning on being here?”
“I have a couple of days before I have to leave.”
“I have a room at the Tilman hotel,” she said. “I can meet you in the lobby whenever you like.”
A touch of a virtual button caused the pad to display a map showing the route to her hotel. It would take him less than 15 minutes to walk there.
“I can meet you in the lobby in about 20 minutes,” he said.
“I’ll see you then.” Her image vanished as the connection was terminated.
Tom paid his bill then headed down to the street.
Chapter 42
“They’re heading for Muthan,” Lieutenant Billings reported. “And from the looks of it, they’re in no hurry. At this rate it’ll take them a little over ten hours.”
“What the hell are they up to?” Scarboro asked, leaning forward and pinching his upper lip between his index finger and thumb.
“Maybe they want us to assemble our ships there so they can wipe them out all at once,” the helm replied in a sarcastic voice.
Scarboro was repeatedly pulling on his upper lip, letting it slip between his fingers each time. Sitting back in his chair, he said, “That might actually be their plan. Dragon, show me Muthan’s defenses.”
The large central screen in front of the Captain instantly switched from displaying the current tactical situation to a listing of the various defense systems on and around the Rouldian military base. Scarboro scanned the list for a moment. “It’s a pretty small base,” he said. “Primary shield with eight individually shielded energy cannons. Sixteen unshielded armored point defense guns. Twenty-seven stealth-capable automated mobile defense stations. The two heavy cruisers left behind have been joined by 22 Shandarian vessels with more on the way.”
“Are they sending any ships to Parggrish?” Owens asked from the com-station. “I’m sure there are survivors. We can’t just- - -”
“Check the message traffic!” Scarboro interrupted using too loud of a voice.
The man actually ducked as if the Captain had thrown something at him. He glared at Scarboro for a second then turned to his console.
“Sorry,” Scarboro said. “I’m not used to sitting by while an enemy ship murders hundreds of thousands of Alliance citizens. Let me know what you find.”
The bridge had gone silent. The crew was not accustomed to seeing their captain so upset. Owens busied himself at his console then turned and said, “At least 17 civilian ships are on the way from both Rouldian and Shandarian planets. Most of them should begin arriving in about 18 hours.”
“Thank you,” Scarboro replied. “Have you seen anything about sending reinforcements to Muthan? There’s a large Shandarian base on Torth that’s within range.”
“Just a few,” Owens replied. “Most of the fleet stationed there has been sent to Corthos and Smargrin to evacuate as many people as possible.”
“So we’re turning our warships into ferries instead of engaging him?” Billings asked, the tone of his voice clearly indicating his disgust. “That’s not the way I would have played it.”
“Our primary responsibility is to protect the civilian population,” Scarboro replied, raising his voice. “How many ships are stationed at Torth?”
“Fifty-three,” Billings instantly, replied having just looked it up.
“How many ships were defending Parggrish?”
“Fifty-four.”
“I rest my case,” Scarboro said with finality. Glancing at the time, he noted that Commander Stiles would be arriving in a little over an hour to take the watch. He leaned back in the chair and stared at the defense systems available to Muthan.
“There must be a way to kill that bastard,” he thought. He was still staring at the same screen when Stiles arrived.
* * * * *
“Captain on the bridge!” the marine announced as he held the door open for Scarboro.
“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” Commander Stiles said from the command chair.
“I want to see what happens at M
uthan,” Scarboro replied. He waved the Commander back into the seat and headed for the coffee dispenser. “I’m going back to bed as soon as the action’s over. What’s our status?”
“Sublight, approaching the base. The battleship is actively scanning everything within range. The base has been evacuated with the defenses under the control of the base tactical computer. Twenty-four ships have positioned themselves between the base and the battleship but they won’t be there much longer.”
“They’re leaving?” Scarboro asked, taking a tentative sip from his steaming cup.
“We saw what happened at Parggrish. Twenty-four ships don’t stand a chance against the firepower wielded by that battleship. The Base Commander claims he’s set up a little surprise for the Chroniech but he refused to share it with me.”
“Really?” Scarboro took up a position between the captain’s chair and the tactical station. “I’m glad I decided to be here then.”
“Since you’re here,” Stiles said, typing a command into the keyboard. “Centralis has done some analysis of the battleship’s tactics during the attack on Parggrish. Looks like they’ve uncovered a possible weakness although I have no clue how we’ll ever manage to exploit it.”
Scarboro set his mug in the holder built into the command chair then leaned over to read the message displayed on an auxiliary screen. “So they can’t electronically steer the Kyrra weapon!” Scarboro exclaimed. “That explains why they couldn’t track us after we applied emergency acceleration.”
“These are interesting numbers,” Stiles said, tapping the screen. “It can track a moving vessel and quickly target another ship, but the movement is slow, almost as if they have to turn the entire emitter array.”
“So it’s not a fixed mount, but it is limited in how fast it can move.”
“There’s more,” Stiles said. “Because they only have a single weapon, they have a serious blind spot where it can’t engage any targets. It’s hard to shoot through your own ship.”
“There must be some way we can turn this to our advantage,” Scarboro said.
“Only if we have a massive number of ships and the Chroniech Captain is dumb enough to allow himself to be surrounded.”
“The fleet’s leaving!” the tactical station announced.
Scarboro turned so he could watch the action in the tactical globe. The Alliance fleet was indeed accelerating out of the system as fast as they could. The battleship ignored them and continued on toward the base. Several minutes passed.
A pair of energy beams flashed out from the battleship into what appeared to be empty space. But, instead of continuing on forever, they struck the unshielded armor of one of the battle stations that had been running in stealth mode. Confident in the power of his standard weapons, the Chroniech Captain didn’t bother to use the Kyrra weapon. The battle station fired back with everything in its arsenal but the range was too great and the only effect was a little display of light from the battleship’s shield.
The defense station raised its shield but it did little to stop the onslaught of raw energy being poured into it. The armor quickly melted then exploded away from the station. One of the beams found a missile and detonated its fuel supply. This set off a cascade of internal explosions that silenced the station, turning it into a useless pile of scrap. Less than a minute later, a second battle station suffered a similar fate.
The crew of the Dragon watched as the battleship cleared a path through the defense stations until it was within range of the base. The Kyrra antimatter cannon opened fire, blasting past the base’s defense shield as if it didn’t exist. Unlike Parggrish, Muthan was built on a small moon of one of the system’s gigantic gas giants. No atmosphere existed to block the passage of that hellish beam. Thousands of tons of rock mixed with thousands of tons of what had once been a base and were hurled into space as the beam generated the equivalent of a small continuous nuclear explosion. The beam struck this mass of material as it was ejected, causing a portion of it to reverse direction and crash into the surface. In less than 60 seconds, the base was completely destroyed.
The battleship swung its incredible weapon around and one-by-one took out the shielded defense stations as well as everything around them. When the beam finally winked out, the moon now sported a glowing circle, making it look like some sort of giant evil unblinking eye staring off into space. The battleship moved in to survey the results of their handiwork. At a distance of 30,000 kilometers, four beams of energy appeared from the surface.
The Chroniech shield blazed with deflected energy. Almost instantly, four of the battleship’s incredibly powerful primary guns along with ten secondary batteries rained destruction down on two of the sources. Five seconds later, two of the Alliance weapons were silenced. The Chroniech beams quickly switched targets and after another five seconds the short battle was over.
“Nice try!” Scarboro exclaimed.
“How’d they do that?” Stiles asked.
“They buried four of the defense stations away from the base and kept them in stealth mode,” Scarboro said through a giant smile. “Brilliant!”
“They should’ve buried more,” Stiles scowled. “We might’ve had them.”
“He won’t fall for that again either,” Scarboro said, his smile vanishing. “Damn it!”
“I’ve been thinking about something,” Lieutenant Dejan said from the tactical station. After noticing he had their attention, he went on, “You said the Chroniech ship has a very large blind spot associated with the Kyrra weapon—right?”
Stiles nodded his head.
“Well, why can’t we use the same technology the Rouldians use in their interceptors to drop out of stardrive in their blind spot within firing range? Our guns will blow them to dust before they know what hit them.”
“Why can’t we just smash a ship into them at FTL velocities?” Petty Officer First Class Gerry Walters piped in from the com-station before anyone could reply.
Chief Giacinto spun his chair around. “Neither idea will work,” he said, getting up from the engineering station shaking his head.
“You can’t hit anything while the stardrive is active” Lieutenant Dejan admonished Walters. “But I don’t see why we can’t incorporate Rouldian technology into our ships.”
The engineer turned to Walters and said, “Ships under FTL drive don’t actually exist in real space. A small rock or an unpowered ship presents no danger to an FTL vessel. Larger objects or ships with an active sublight or FTL drive will knock the ship into normal space by disrupting the drive fields. It will then fly off at whatever relative trajectory it had prior to engaging its stardrive. It’s called intrinsic velocity.”
Turning to Lieutenant Dejan, the engineer continued, “Rouldian interceptors have the ability to determine what their intrinsic velocity is no matter where they are in space. Their stardrives are also capable of extremely fine control. FTL drive fields cause a minute error in the perceived location of objects located in normal space. This isn’t usually a problem until you try to maneuver a ship in close proximity to another vessel. Since every ship’s drive field is unique, all Mishpa-class interceptors undergo a long process of having the stardrive distortion mapped for every power level. This is what allows them to drop out of stardrive so close to another ship. But, even though they’re specifically built for doing this, it’s still a very dangerous maneuver. The crews are all volunteers.”
“So there’s no way for us to do something similar?” Lieutenant Dejan asked.
“No. If we tried, we could easily end up dropping into normal space too far away for us to engage with our own weapons yet close enough for the battleship to use that Kyrra weapon against us. Worse, since we have no idea what our intrinsic velocity is relative to them, we have no way of determining where we’ll fly off to the moment we re-enter normal space. We could collide with the battleship.”
Captain Scarboro downed the last of his coffee. “I’m hitting my rack,” he said. “Where’s the battleship head
ing now?”
“Corthos,” the helm replied. “It’s the next closest inhabited planet.”
Stiles glanced at one of his consoles and said, “If he continues to target the next closest inhabited planet, he’ll hit Corthos then Shmargrin. I’m not sure if he’ll try to take out Torth or not. It’s a large Shandarian base. If he hits Torth, the next target would be Kree’a-Thera. If he decides against taking on a large base then he’ll most likely head for Maktar. Either one of the last two will put him in range of Glish.”
“Glish!” Scarboro almost dropped his cup as he was putting it into the tiny auto-washer.
“Yep,” Stiles replied, settling back into the seat. “Good night Sir.”
Scarboro left the bridge doubting he would get any more sleep.
Chapter 43
Tom was humming a tune as he walked up the ramp leading into Lashpa’s ship. The last day and a half had been filled with pure enjoyment and even the knowledge of what happened at Parggrish couldn’t dampen the aura of happiness that seemed to surround him.
“Lashpa is in the conference room,” her ship whispered. “She’s with Dan Kunzman and Mike Adler.”
Tom forced himself to stop humming but he couldn’t hide the smile on his face as he walked through the conference room’s open door. Lashpa and her two guests were standing together in a tight group. Two bottles of unopened water were sitting on the otherwise empty table.
“You appear to be in far better spirits than when I last saw you,” Laspha said.
“Now that’s a satisfied customer!” Dan added.
“This place definitely lives up to its name,” Tom replied. Walking over to Lashpa he scratched the area just behind the hinge of her jaw.
